I was incredibly naïve when I made the spreadsheet. I was naïve because I did not understand the forces that would make the document go viral. I was naïve because I thought that the document would not be made public, and when it became clear that it would be, I was naïve because I thought that the focus would be on the behavior described in the document, rather than on the document itself. It is hard to believe, in retrospect, that I really thought this. But I did....

In the weeks after the spreadsheet was exposed, my life changed dramatically.... This escalated when I learned Katie Roiphe would be publishing my name in a forthcoming piece in Harper’s magazine. In early December, Roiphe had emailed me to ask if I wanted to comment for a Harper’s story she was writing on the “feminist moment.” She did not say that she knew I had created the spreadsheet. I declined and heard nothing more from Roiphe or Harper’s until I received an email from a fact checker with questions about Roiphe’s piece. “Katie identifies you as a woman widely believed to be one of the creators of the Shitty Men in Media List,” the fact checker wrote. “Were you involved in creating the list? If not, how would you respond to this allegation?” The next day, a controversy ensued on Twitter after Roiphe’s intention to reveal my identity was made public. People who opposed the decision by Harper’s speculated about what would happen to me as a result of being identified. They feared that I would be threatened, stalked, raped, or killed. The outrage made it seem inevitable that my identity would be exposed even before the Roiphe piece ran. All of this was terrifying. I still don’t know what kind of future awaits me now that I’ve stopped hiding....

LOL! I am betting that if she hadn’t put names in the spreadsheet, her name would be safe too. Why not write a book like “Media Confidential”? Maybe make it a roman a clef. Let other people come up with the names.

"I was naïve because I thought that the focus would be on the behavior described in the document, rather than on the document itself. It is hard to believe, in retrospect, that I really thought this. But I did...."

Does she not read magazines?

Or did she think they only did that kind of thing to the People Who Deserve It?

It can make you spend hours dissecting the psychology of the kind of men who do not think about your interiority much at all

I'm no psychiatrist, but I suspect that many of these monsters understand the interiority of their victims more than one may imagine. Causing fear may be what gets them off. I think sometimes there's an assumption that evil people don't understand the pain they're causing, which may not be the case.

Annie CI like the name Moira too, but it must mean "idiot" in Gaelic. Harper's editors and the writer say they were never going to mention Moira's identity in the article without her approval. Not to mention all the writers' who protested the rumor that Harper's would. Moira "outed" herself.

"They feared that I would be threatened, stalked, raped, or killed"I predict that she will not be credibly threatened, or stalked, raped, or killed. This is not the world of The Handmaid's Tale. It is so very far from the world of The Handmaid's Tale that unproven accusations of mere boorish behavior on the part of a male will cost him his job.

Note the underlying assumption that led to the creation of "Shitty Media Men." That's that there aren't any decent men in the major media—well-connected men of integrity to which these women could appeal for assistance. The major media has two only types of males:

1. "Shitty" sexual predators

2. Spineless cowards.

That is why this is seen as a problem these women have to deal on their own and in such desperate ways.

I discuss those sex-tinged issues in a book I wrote for hospital staff. The context is different, but the problems are similar. Hospitalized women, particularly if young and pretty, can be victims too.

--Michael W. Perry, author of Embarrass Less: A Practical Guide for Doctors, Nurses, Students and Hospitals

Dunno. Seemed like a good idea. I am happy that a lot of men got listed there, some of them multiple times, and then got their careers destroyed as a result.There's a caveat, of course: obviously anyone with a brain understands that being listed there means nothing in itself; it's uncorroborated anonymous testimony and has zero credibility. The point of the list should have been to allow women [I'm using the words "women" and "men" to mean victims and perpetrators, though of course anyone with a brain and a heart understands that it can be any genders] to see that many other women were posting about a particular man, and thereby to feel safe themselves posting, and maybe putting together a case against that man. Those are ones whose careers should have been destroyed.Unfortunately, people with a brain don't run things anymore.It's hard for me to see that people who got unfairly destroyed have a tort against this woman, any more than they'd have a complaint against craigslist when something false is posted there. Their complaint should be against the people who libeled them in the post, if they can find them, and against the idiots who reacted by firing them, etc.I do think her disclaimer should have been firmer; a "grain of salt" isn't enough.

I am going to create a spreadsheet with the names of women in media who are rumored to have engaged in sexual misbehavior. I will then anonymously distribute it to a few dozen men who work in media. I hope that they don't pass it on or track it back to me!

I guess this wee girl is learning the hard way what we were all told by our wise parents: Never put anything in writing, no matter how anonymous you think you are, that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times.

(I routinely break this rule here at Althouse, but I'm a nobody, not a millennial who's been in the industry for nine minutes who just shit the bed she sleeps in.)

Apparently Katie Roiphe (the author of the Harper's piece) is getting savaged on Twitter by feminists for the mere possibility of outing the creator of the list. Evidently in actuality she wasn't even intending to reveal the name, but that didn't matter to the #metoo mob I guess.

"MikeR I am sure that A) some big legal guns are going to disagree with you on that and B) that you'll be proven dramatically wrong." Quite possible. IANAL. I'm throwing in my .0002c worth: I think the lady is right in thinking that this is a useful way for a bunch of isolated individually helpless people to find out if they can form clusters of similar cases to defend themselves and punish their abusers. I don't see how else it could have been done, and it needed doing.She should have been way heavier on the caveats. But modern liberals don't think that way, till it's too late.

"Bennie, Bennie, this is Fred. How the hell are ya, buddy? How's the family? Listen, Bennie, I know we haven't talked in a while, but have I got a concept for ya, & I'm lookin' for your support here. Hear me out, Bennie, hear me out. You know that Moira Whatsername bimbo & her on-line list of perves like our mutual buddy, the Big H? Well, here is it, B. my man, here it is:

I recommend reading the piece. It's well-written, and answers these questions about why she did what she did. I find it refreshing that she took the time to provide detailed information about what happened here. It's not just spin, it's a decent essay that sheds some light on the larger debate.

I wish more people would provide honest information about their own views, assumptions, and mistakes. That kind of first-hand information can lead to improved understanding.

I had to go to 4chan to see the actual spreadsheet (now I have to take a shower). I didn't peruse the list I just wanted to see if it had a column showing political party/affiliation. Sadly, it does not. If the list is still a work in progress maybe someone could add that column and start filling it in.

I'm certain that the situation at the top in the media was terrible for women but that doesn't justify being as low-down mean as possible in one's own small way and then whining like a girl about the largely imaginary blowback.

I recall an incident at the University of Oregon, in which posters were hung around campus depicting women as punching bags. The feminazis demanded an investigation, and the Kampus Keystones got right on it. Then two of the female idiots in a Womyn's Studies course stood up in class and told everyone that they had hung the posters, which were supposed to be anti-war (go figure). One of their Powerful Sisters turned them in to the Keystones, who were not impressed with the antiwar business. They had got their man, even if he had turned out to be a couple of girls, and they dragged them in for interrogation. There was talk of criminal charges and expulsion. The feminazis then screamed and howled and generally made fools of themselves to the extent possible -- this was before pussy hats -- about how the Keystones were oppressing these innocent maidens whose scalps they had been demanding the previous day. There was much agonized debate, accusations of racism were deployed (the Keysone-In-Chief was black, natch), and it looked like horrible consequences must ensue for all concerned. Then it was June, everyone went away for the Summer, and nothing more was heard of the whole wretched episode.

I played a minor role in this affair. I was in a band, and frequently hung posters, and said as much in a Letter to the Editor regarding various draconian proposals that were being discussed as possible solutions to the appalling problem of free speech on a college campus. As a result, I was awakened one morning by an extremely short, red-headed woman in a Sheriff's Deputy uniform standing on my doorstep. She had been assigned as an investigator to the Kampus Keystones (they were toy cops, and couldn't operate off campus) and had been sent to track me down and determine what sort of posters I was hanging. I showed her the one I was working on, which used a still from a porn video of a man in diapers, standing with his hands tied over his head in someone's garage. I had put "Bound For Glory!" in large letters across the top, and strategically placed the dates and locations of some upcoming gigs over the lawnmower in the background. I din't think the mower fit in with the larger concept. She congratulated me on my talents, and went on her way. I don't think she was altogether on board with the poster inquisition.

The rage against Katie Roiphe exposes feminism’s hatred of women"We are now starting to see that #MeToo is not a pro-woman movement at all. It is a highly politicised campaign driven by, and benefiting, well-connected women in culture and the media, who must maintain their alleged victim status at all costs because it is leverage for them in terms both of their career and their moral authority in public discussion. This is why they respond with such unforgiving, misogynistic fury to any woman who questions them – because these women, these upstarts, these difficult creatures, threaten to unravel the victim politics that is so beneficial to a narrow but influential strata of society today. And so these women must be silenced, cast out, written off as ‘damaged’ and not worth listening to; let’s just be grateful that the asylums such free-thinking women would once have been dumped in no longer exist."

Are sexual offenses really that pervasive and blatant? I would think all of these scandals overdone, but, then again, I would never have thought Charley Rose was a predator.......Hollywood is its own place, but I would have thought the people in media would be as well behaved as people in insurance or banking. Maybe not. Do women in other professions have similar stories to tell about the men they work with. Some of this stuff is really over the top.

In the beginning, I only wanted to create a place for women to share their stories of harassment and assault without being needlessly discredited or judged. The hope was to create an alternate avenue to report this kind of behavior and warn others without fear of retaliation. (emphasis added)

I understand the impulse, and even sympathise with it to some extent. If you make a complaint about someone else's behaviour within an organisation, then they probably have to decide whether your complaint is true or not, and then decide what to do about it (i.e. do they have to discipline your target? Is there a bigger problem they need to investigate). And that process -- assuming the people involved take their jobs and their responsibilities seriously -- necessarily leads to them asking you questions about your allegation, looking for confirming and disconfirming evidence, and possibly deciding that your allegations aren't credible. And of course, your name is out there, and if your target has been given a fair opportunity to defend himself and confront his accusers (not necessarily the norm for internal investigations, mind), he's going to know his accuser was you, and other people are probably going to know as well.

A rigorous system for dealing with allegations of sexual harassment operates as a strong, strong disincentive against speaking up. In many cases, that's a good thing -- people shouldn't be making false allegations. But it does mean that on the margin there may be true allegations that people aren't going to bring forward.

I think a "safe space" for these kinds of allegations is perverse -- people shouldn't be actively encouraged to make allegations with a cloyingly supportive environment which studiously avoids challenging any allegation in any way. There are people (women and men) who will respond to those incentives in predictable fashion -- by embellishing their experiences to gain sympathy and sometimes just making stuff up.

But we have anonymous whistleblower hotlines for a reason -- so that people who are legitimately afraid of retaliation have a means of communicating information to people who ought to do something about it. Of course, anyone who's dealt with whistleblower allegations knows that a priori the credibility of any particular whistleblower allegation is low. So I'd guess it's the same here. This isn't quite the same (the point of the list was evidently to allow women to protect themselves by avoiding situations with these men -- the classic self-help solution that nowadays is blasted as victim-blaming) but any system where people are encouraged to make claims that will be protected from any critical scrutiny is going to accumulate a fair amount of rubbish.

"I sympathize with the desire to be careful, even as all available information suggests that false allegations are rare."

You have to wonder, how did she suppose that this cloud-sourced document she was enabling would be protected from abuse? For example, how long could it possibly exist before men (actual men, not lesbians on hormones) found out about it? And what was supposed to keep them from adding to it? Their testicles? This wasn't "Believe All Women", this was "Believe Everything".

"In the weeks after the spreadsheet was exposed, my life changed dramatically. I lost friends: some who thought I had been overzealous, others who thought I had not been zealous enough. I lost my job, too. The fear of being exposed, and of the harassment that will inevitably follow, has dominated my life since. I’ve learned that protecting women is a position that comes with few protections itself."

Kind of like being the person who started "Everyone Draw Muhammad Day", right? Except the FBI hasn't told her to assume a new identity if she doesn't want to be killed.

I dislike that the word naive has so regularly become an escape term that functions more as an accusation: "unscrupulous others have done something nefarious that decent people would never dream anyone could do." Yes dear, your only fault was being too high-minded.

It's not hard to unmask a rumor-monger if you have a list of suspects. Make up a juicy rumor, share it with each person on the list, changing key details each time, and see which version makes it into the spreadsheet. This is a common trick to catch spies, leakers, and whistle-blowers.

Wait, this was anonymous, right? All the inputs were made without verification of the people involved and a lot of them were...ahem...over the top.

Just a brief question: How do you know that some of the posters weren't men?

The 'fake' part doesn't even need to be addressed. I once visited a this marriage blog and in it there was a 90 page HUGE very popular thread where this pastor guy had an innocent little wife who had a brief one time affair...and she was pregnant and they needed to wait for the birth to do a DNA test and what should he do about it?

The responses were EPIC! Sympathy, recriminations, and this person posted religiously, sometimes 3 times a day.

And of course, it was fake.

The thread was closed. There are some people who have far too much time on their hands.

Some of them put up nooses, or paint swastikas to 'start conversations' (lie)

She has no qualms about putting up a document that names men as sex offenders on the basis of any random person's say-so, no evidence required. She's totally indignant that her name will be exposed as the creator of the document that she admits to creating. Sounds fair.

Laying aside the intent or content of the memo; I'd have questions about the medium itself.

She chose to use a Google Sheet in the cloud to compose the document, rather than something stored locally like an Excel spreadsheet. The ONLY reason to use a Google Sheet or a Google Doc is to facilitate _SHARING_ the document. From the beginning, she PLANNED to release this broadly. (That, or perhaps she's just an idiot when it comes to technology.)

If I use a Google Doc or a Google Sheet, I already know - by that decision! - that I'm going to share it with somebody, and more likely several somebodies.